


Inkstains

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Academia, F/M, Modern AU, References to Canon, Second Chances, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21597142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Three years ago, grad student Brienne walked away from her friend and crush, but she never forgot about him. Jaime never forgot her either.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 32
Kudos: 435





	Inkstains

His hands were clean. That was the first thing she noticed, once the shock dissipated. He was really here.

Jaime’s hands were never clean when she knew him, always spattered and smeared with ink, but that was years ago. His honey-blonde hair was longer then, too, messy and always falling in his eyes. His tailored suit fit exquisitely, his tie and pocket square both a rich crimson. He’d healed well, far better than she had. Looking at him now you’d never know a castle had fallen on him.

He was standing by the display of arms and armor, his sharp eyes taking in the Valyrian steel swords, priceless relics. Even at a distance Brienne recognized them. Longclaw, Heartsbane, Widow’s Wail, Oathkeeper. She’d known he wouldn’t be able to resist an exhibition of artifacts from the second Long Night. But she’d come all the way from Storm’s End betting he would come tonight, to the members-only preview. 

Brienne had fooled herself, from the moment she decided to go, through buying her train ticket, even as the train crossed through the Kingswood on its way north. She’d told herself it would be enough to see him, enough to know he was well. She didn’t need to speak to him. But the temptation was too great. 

Her heart pounded as she made her way across the room, nodding to a few acquaintances but desperate to reach him before she lost her nerve. She downed the rest of the wine she’d been sipping all evening and set the glass on a passing waiter’s tray. She stopped a few feet away, within his eyeline, but didn’t speak. If he walked away now, she wouldn’t follow. She didn’t mind staring at the swords for as long as he wanted. 

The red and black rippled steel of Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail was even more striking in person. She itched to touch them, to feel the weight of them in her hands. As if that would ever happen. She’d be tackled by security if she dared to do more than touch the glass display case.

“You’re a long way from Winterfell,” Jaime finally said, turning his head to glance her way. 

Her hair was shorter, and scars marred her cheek, neck and shoulder. No longer a broke grad student, she wore tailored midnight-blue pants and an azure and teal watercolor print silk top, simple ballet slippers on her feet. She’d felt almost pretty standing in front of the mirror in her apartment, but now her efforts seemed both inadequate and embarrassing.

They’d met in the library at Winterfell College, four years ago, when Brienne finally tracked down the student constantly checking out the books she needed for her dissertation. He was golden-haired and beautiful, at least a decade older than her judging by the beginning of crow’s feet around his eyes, with an acerbic wit and absolutely no sympathy for her plight. After a solid month irritating the librarians with their cloak and dagger antics trying to steal books from each other, Professor Stark had dragged them both into her office and ordered them to share. Nevermind that Catelyn Stark wasn’t even in Jaime’s department. Brienne was studying the literature of the short span between the Targaryen era and the empire of the Three-Eyed Raven. Jaime was studying the tactics of the Long Night and how the War of the Five Kings impacted the Siege of Winterfell. 

“I came from Storm’s End. The train ride wasn’t so bad,” she said neutrally. “And you?”

Jaime huffed a quiet, humorless laugh. “You needn’t feel compelled to make small talk, Brienne. You’ve done your bit, you’ve said hello, you’ve showed off just how well you’ve done for yourself. Don’t pretend you actually care what’s become of me the last three years.” 

“Of course I care.” She took a careful step closer, her voice low. People were watching them, whispers starting. “You dropped out of school, you disappeared. And it was all my fault.”

He turned toward her at last, and his gaze found her face, so intent she could almost feel his fingertips brushing her scarred cheek. “Catelyn Stark sent us to Harrenhal. You only wanted to see that damned bear pit. And you certainly paid for that privilege.”

Brienne’s face burned, and her hand flitted nervously over her scars. Contractors cutting corners had improperly braced the crumbling Tower of Ghosts. A minor tremor from construction on the other side of the castle had weakened the scaffolding and the entire tower came down while they were inside the old bearpit nearby, trapped inside as rock, brick, and wood rained down on them. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—Hey!” Her apology choked off as he seized her arm, pulling it toward him. 

Brienne plastered a smile on her face, making brief eye contact with the women now looking worriedly at the two of them. Unwelcome attention. Did he not realize he was making a scene? Or did he not care?

Jaime’s left hand was clamped about her wrist. His scarred right hand, fingers still a bit crooked, brushed over her forearm. His burning gaze was locked on the ink there. His voice was a harsh whisper as his fingertip traced the lines inked on her skin. “Is this a joke?”

She shook her head, shivering under his touch. The design was simple. The sun as a compass rose, nestled inside a crescent moon with small stars in it. 

At Winterfell, Jaime had never been without his pens, his endless notebooks filled with scribbles and drawings, diagrams of castles and weaponry, battleplans and the faces of heroes and villains. He was illustrating his dissertation, but half of what he drew was just for fun. One day while she was poring over a book they both needed to read, quietly reading aloud for his benefit, Jaime had started scribbling on her arm. She’d allowed it because it kept him busy, and found a detailed rendering of Oathkeeper on her forearm when he was done. 

Over the months they worked, if not together then in parallel, on their dissertations, Jaime often doodled on her arm or shoulder. Swords, ancient House sigils, flowers, birds, seven-pointed stars. After awhile she’d asked him to use permanent markers so it didn’t wash away within hours. He’d drawn similar designs several times, but this one was her favorite, and this one she’d kept after he disappeared from her life.

“I thought you hated tattoos,” he muttered. 

“I do.” And despite that, she’d roamed the halls of Winterfell College for months wearing Jaime’s artistry, including one stressful week in which they’d spent so much time in the library that she ended up with nearly a full sleeve of interlocked designs, swords and knights and sigils enmeshed in thorny vines. She’d found it hard, once he started, to deny him when he wanted to touch her. 

“Then how is this still here?” Jaime’s thumb rubbed slow circles over the ink he’d put on her skin three years ago on the long train ride from Winterfell to Harrenhal while she read aloud the memoir of a brown brother of the Quiet Isle. 

“The ink was faded, but I had a photo to show Gendry for reference.” Gendry Waters was a friend of Arya Stark’s, and if he’d wondered why he was turning a Sharpie doodle into a tattoo, he’d been too polite to ask. 

Jaime’s gaze came up to meet hers, his hands still on her. His brow was furrowed in confusion. “Why would you—” He growled softly in frustration and let her go. “No, I’m not doing this. I gave up trying to understand you when you left without a word.”

“Trying to understand _me_? I was an open book, Jaime. You were the one playing at chivalry and toying with me until I thought—” She stopped. This wasn’t the place, and there was no point hashing this out now. She’d been wrong. 

On that last trip together, she’d indulged in a pretty, poisonous fantasy. Without the stifling confines of the library around them, without the eyes of their colleagues and students following them around campus, she’d felt free enough to let herself wonder why Jaime sat so close, why he sought out her company so often, why his touch lingered on her skin. 

Brienne glanced around them. More eyes than she’d like were watching them. An argument in the middle of a museum fete, how very common of them. How delightful to watch and speculate on who the ugly woman was riling up the handsome and reclusive Lannister heir. “Follow me,” he said tersely, and moved with purpose toward a banquet table from the Twins, laden with dishes and goblets as if the Red Wedding were about to begin instead of ended in a bloodbath centuries ago. 

Brienne followed. She’d approached him, she’d disturbed his enjoyment of the artifacts, she owed him a few more minutes, even if he spent all of them quietly berating her. How pathetic that she’d suffer his verbal arrows just to be in his company again. 

He didn’t stop at the morbid display, he went around to a door marked “Staff Only,” pulled a keycard from his pocket, and swiped it through. The lock turned green and Jaime opened the door. He waited in the doorway until she was through.

“Why do you have a key? Or do all the biggest donors get one?” she asked, unexpectedly bitter. How easy it would have been to complete her research if she’d had access to all the off-display archived collections of the largest history museum in the country. 

He jammed the keycard back in his pocket and continued down the hall as the door closed behind them. “I work here,” he answered. 

Of course, Jaime worked here. What had she expected? That he had come here tonight for her too? That he would declare his love and sweep her into his arms? That was laughable. 

Jaime stopped halfway down the hall and opened a door. 

As she followed him inside, she saw his name on a plaque by the door. Jaime Lannister, assistant curator. The door closed behind them again. Jaime leaned against his desk, messy as always, and crossed his arms. “What are you doing here, Brienne?”

Three years ago, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly her best friend, she would have skirted the truth, but now she had nothing left to lose. “Looking for you.”

Jaime snorted in disbelief. “Funny, when you knew exactly where I was you stayed as far away as you could.”

Brienne had been rejected so often in her life that she expected it. She couldn’t say it no longer had the power to hurt her, but she was well-armored by experience. Rejection was no longer the blow of a warhammer, merely the glancing strike of a blunted sword. But she knew its power, knew how those wounds could fester. She wouldn’t leave Jaime thinking he was the reason she’d left.

“Your family made it clear that I was not needed,” she said quietly. “Not wanted.”

Walking down the hospital hallway for the last time, she just kept hearing his last words to her, before his father took her aside. “Good-night, my lady,” warm with affection and his doped-up smile only for her. One of the nurses had noticed her crying as she walked by, and had hugged her and reassured her that her gallant knight would be just fine, perhaps just a bit clumsy with his right hand. The infection that had nearly killed him was finally under control, and he was on the mend. 

The nurse’s kindness had made her cry even harder. Jaime always referring to her as “my lady” and making gallant little gestures had been at first an apology for his beastly behavior toward her and later an inside joke between the two of them. The nurses, every last one able to see that Brienne’s friendship was more courtly love than platonic affection, had openly swooned over Jaime’s flowery manners toward her, exaggerated by the pain medication making him goofier than usual. 

Tywin Lannister had even offered her money for her medical bills, a ridiculous amount that could only be a bribe to stay out of his son’s life. His cold green eyes had looked at her like a bug he needed to crush. Cersei had only smirked, her hand possessive on Jaime’s arm, as their father spoke. Through it all Jaime slept on, oblivious. Once Tywin had gone, Cersei wasted no time in telling Brienne how Jaime had always pitied the outcasts, the freaks and the loners, how he befriended them but it didn’t really mean anything.

Pity. That was what he felt for her. That felt truer than the possibility of sincere affection. She’d had years of bitter experience to prove the truth of it. So she’d left, before he tired of her, before she was no longer of use to him. Before Tywin Lannister could pull her funding, buy the mortgage and foreclose on her father’s house, or any of the other nasty tricks he’d quietly threatened when she refused his first order to leave.

“You believed them?” Somehow he managed to sound both angry and incredulous. 

Brienne shrugged helplessly. “They’re your family.” Overprotective and vicious as the lions of their ancient sigil, but Jaime’s blood for better or worse.

Jaime rolled his eyes. “My family who made my medical decisions by telephone and didn’t show up until I was out of the woods.” His voice dripped with disdain. “Meanwhile you made a thorough nuisance of yourself and refused to leave my side.”

Her injuries had been largely superficial except for the broken arm, and that was set and casted easily enough. But Jaime’s wounds had become infected and the first round of antibiotics had failed. She’d been sleeping in a recliner in his room for days when Tywin Lannister and Cersei Baratheon finally deigned to come to Harrenhal. 

“Your father told me to leave. What was I supposed to do, chain myself to your bed, wait for security to throw me out? I had no right to be there.” She’d gone over it a hundred times, all the things she should have done differently, but in the end, none of it mattered. Jaime hadn’t fought for her, either. And why should he? If there’d been a moment, or several, when the air between them crackled with something she couldn’t name, it hadn’t been enough to thwart the will of Tywin Lannister. 

Some of Jaime’s anger melted away. His father would have kicked her out, without a moment’s hesitation. He would have destroyed her and her father and not given it a moment’s thought. Jaime knew it as well as she did. “You didn’t even say good-bye.”

She sighed. “He wouldn’t let me.”

Jaime scrubbed a hand over his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. There were reading glasses on his desk now, beside his laptop and notebooks, evidence of the time that had passed since they parted. “Didn’t you ever wonder why my father would go to so much trouble to run off my friend?”

“No.” That had never really been a question. She kept her eyes trained on his desk. “You told me your father sent you to boarding school to keep you away from less high-born children. I don’t have money or connections, not even a pretty face. ” 

“Brienne.” His voice was soft, softer than it had been tonight. 

“Let’s not start lying to each other now,” she chided. “I know who I am.” Brienne clasped a hand over her tattoo, and let herself really look at him. Still handsome, still more comfortable in his skin than she would ever be, but deeper lines around his eyes, salt and pepper in his close-cropped beard. They’d lost so much time. She’d thought of him often in those years, missing his company and his smile and even his foul temper.

“I don’t think you do.” Jaime was watching her, his shoulders slumped, all the anger drained away. “You were needed,” he said firmly. “You were wanted.”

Sweet words, but she heard the past tense all too loudly. “I didn’t know,” she answered helplessly. She’d hoped, and that had been hard enough. 

“You should’ve.” He reached out, tugged her hand away, used it to pull her closer to him. His touch whispered over the tattoo again. “I made every excuse to touch you.”

“The drawing? You were bored, Jaime, and I was a convenient canvas,” she protested. They’d spent hours poring over bards’ tales and minstrel songs, Brienne analyzing the metaphor and meter, Jaime searching for the nuggets of truth in the fanciful tales.

“Brienne, you were hardly convenient. I can read, you know. I could’ve finished those books in half the time by myself.” Some of his old arrogance was seeping into his speech, and she didn’t like it. She liked less what he was saying. 

“Then why didn’t you?” Brienne could hear the challenge in her own voice. If she’d been so blind to his intentions, then he could be transparent now. Jaime had never been one to dissemble or lie to make others more comfortable. His honesty had been scathing at times.

His thumb swept slowly over her skin, back and forth in a soothing rhythm. “You irritated the shit out of me at first, you know that. And then you didn’t. And then I didn’t want to be anywhere you weren’t. But you were so good at keeping your distance, laughing off compliments, insisting on paying your own way, pointing out pretty girls as if I should want them, I doubted what I saw in your eyes. So when you left, it was easy to tell myself I was wrong all along.”

Brienne flushed all over. “You weren’t.” 

And then her cell phone started chiming. “Oh.” She fumbled her phone out of her pocket, making Jaime drop her arm. Her alarm. It was almost ten. If she didn’t leave in the next few minutes, she would miss the overnight train to Storm’s End. She felt like the heroine of the old folktale Cinderelia, a clock chiming to mark the end of her one enchanted evening. He said she was wanted. No one could ever take that away from her. 

“You have somewhere to be?” Jaime asked, eyebrow quirked in amusement.

“My train leaves in half an hour.” She stiffened her spine, put on a bright smile she didn’t feel. Walking away tonight might be even harder than it had been at Harrenhal. “But perhaps we’ll see each other again. I come into King’s Landing a few times a year to visit the research libraries.” 

Jaime’s face fell. “That’s it?” His teeth ground, and then his eyes widened. “You have someone waiting for you. Back at Storm’s End. Of course, you do.” The bitterness is his voice was old, but it had never been directed at her before.

“You sound quite jealous,” she said in wonder. He couldn’t possibly still feel something for her. Not after all this time, not with every heiress and great beauty in King’s Landing throwing themselves at his feet. 

“I do, don’t I?” He levered himself up from the desk, walked around to his bookshelves and poured himself a drink from a crystal decanter. He took a deep swallow, and Brienne winced. Jaime had mentioned, more than once, the tendency among Lannisters to overimbibe, and how little he drank as a result. “What’s he like? Another academic?”

She shook her head and thought a moment about what to say. “He’s not much interested in books, but he’s won his local pub quiz so many times they put up a plaque by the bar. And he can talk for hours on any number of subjects, from fishing boats to the deficiencies of modern music.”

“Fishing boats?” Jaime echoed, his lip curled in distaste.

Brienne let herself laugh, which just made him look grumpy. “His name is Selwyn Tarth, Jaime. He’s my father.”

The relief that washed over his face nearly knocked her down. Two minutes more, that was all she could spare, and even then she’d have to run from the last bus stop. 

Jaime downed the rest of his glass in one swallow and thumped it down on the desk among the papers and books. “Does he know why you’re here?”

Brienne nodded. He’d warned her to guard her heart against further pain, had strongly advised her to move on. 

Jaime’s green eyes fixed on her. “Tell him you’ll be home later tomorrow.” 

“I can’t,” she sputtered. “I don’t have a hotel room. I can’t really afford one.”

Jaime waved that off. “You don’t need one.”

“What? No.” Her entire face must be afire right now, she could feel it burning, that horrid mix of mortification and arousal. She’d not let herself think like that, not often at least. 

He laughed. “Gods, woman, what you must think of me. You should see your face. No, there’s an all-night coffee shop around the corner. I know what a proper wench you are.”

“I am not a wench,” Brienne protested. He’d liked to call her that when he was annoyed with her, which was often in their early weeks. 

Jaime smiled, a triumphant thing, blazing bright no matter how hard he tried to hide it. “No, you are my lady, and I’d like to tempt you to join me for a cup of coffee, maybe a slice of pie.”

“And if that goes well?” She couldn’t help the hopeful note in her voice, even as every experience of her youth warned her to be cautious. 

“Then perhaps you might like an after-hours tour of the museum. And if that goes well, we’ll have another cup of coffee and breakfast.” He made it all sound so very tempting, his smile gone rather wicked, his voice dark and sweet as honey. 

“You make it very hard to say no.” Brienne glanced at her phone again. She’d need to take a cab now, too late to chance the bus. 

Jaime took a step toward her. “Then don’t. Come with me.” He paused. “By the gods, you’re just as stubborn as you always were. I _could_ sweeten my offer.”

“How?” Sweet was not the first word she’d use to describe him. Over the top, more than a little ridiculous, more charming than was good for her heart, but not sweet.

Jaime leaned forward like a kid with a secret. “Would you like a taste?” 

Brienne nodded. Maybe the museum had finally acquired the first draft of Maester Tarly’s account of the Long Night, the one rumored to show that several important nobles survived the war but chose to be thought dead and lost to history. Brienne was sure it existed, she’d seen too many references to it. It had probably been in Tywin Lannister’s great library at Casterly Rock all these years, untouched and unnoticed until a small blonde boy went looking for tales of his namesake.

But he didn’t turn to his desk, or move toward the door, or dig through the mess of his office in search of a trinket she would covet. Instead Jaime closed the distance between them, closer than he’d been in three years, and he kissed her.

His kiss was sweet, soft lips and the taste of bourbon, and altogether too brief. Brienne was just getting over her surprise when Jaime pulled back, smiling smugly. She liked the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Still want to catch the train?” he asked.

Brienne only hesitated for a moment. “No.” Her father wouldn’t approve, he’d always blamed Jaime for their sudden break and hoped that seeing him again would break the spell Brienne had been under the past three years. He didn’t understand that Brienne had found someone just as stubborn as she was, and far more prideful. 

Jaime’s gaze kept flickering to her mouth. “Ready to go? Or do you need another taste?”

“I think it’s you who wants another taste,” she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster. Teasing him felt familiar, something comfortable to hold onto when so much else was new.

Jaime chuckled. “Maybe.” He held out his arm. “Come, my lady, let me buy you a slice of the best chocolate cream pie in the kingdom.” His eyes were sparkling, and he could barely keep from laughing. 

Her heart felt like it would thump right out of her chest as she took his arm and walked back through the exhibit on their way out to the street. This time when people looked, she didn’t mind.   
  



End file.
